At present, when checking in at the check-in desk or check-in terminal, every flight luggage item has a band attached to it as an information medium, which is standardized by the International Air Transport Association, (IATA) and is called the “IATA Baggage Tag”. This tag firstly contains an ID barcode as specified by the IATA, but secondly also contains plain-text information, e.g. about the destination airport and the transfer airport. However, only the barcodes on these tags are read on the luggage sorting systems in the airports. For various reasons, great differences in quality arise when the information media are read, however.
It is known that the recognition rates for “transfer luggage” are usually much lower than the recognition rates for luggage checked in at the departure airport itself. The information media (IATA Baggage Tag) on the transfer luggage have often already been bent or damaged by the preceding processes, or are missing entirely. The result of this is that a relatively large proportion of the transfer luggage is misrouted or ends up being encoded manually, with a corresponding time loss in processing. This time loss in turn results in some of the luggage items not reaching the connecting aircraft in good time. This is a great problem for the airlines, since it is accompanied by losses of service quality and considerable costs for subsequent delivery of the luggage.
Another problem is that the barcode does not contain any destination information; this is because this information is held on database computers, e.g. the Sort Allocation Computer of the baggage system or the databases of the airlines (BSM code), which must first be queried. This results in the destination information being transmitted with a delay, which means that these luggage items likewise end up being encoded manually.
It is also essential to identify the luggage items in the context of forwarding the data record to the airlines and to the security authorities (BSM processing).
Besides the more rapid and more secure automatic processing of the luggage items, airlines are also interested in streamlining measures for checking in the luggage. Although it is still relatively simple for passenger check-in to be accomplished by a machine, this is actually much more difficult for luggage check-in. This is because attempts have shown that it is not practical for the “IATA Baggage Tag” to be attached by the passenger himself. The reason is the design as a lengthy adhesive tag whose protective layer needs to be peeled off in order to join the adhesive-coated layers to form a loop around a carrying handle on the luggage item. The adhesive tag should be stuck together relatively precisely during attachment, since otherwise it can become disadvantageously coupled to the luggage item as a result of protruding adhesive layers, which in turn can result in a reduction in the reading rates.
The IATA has produced a study with the aim of solving the problem of poor reading rates using RFID technology. The idea is to extend the “IATA Baggage Tag” by an integrated RFID tag. However, the costs of a tag would be increased approximately tenfold as a result. In addition, it would become necessary to convert/replace the tag printers, and also to install RFID reading tunnels on the luggage sorting systems. Overall, this approach to a solution must be rated as more costly, which means that alternatives are sought.